A should-read book on leadership for knowledge workers, managers, directors, C-levels, and entrepreneurs.

Best book I've ever read on change management. Wish I'd read it 30 years ago.

I had to read this book for class which I took with Professor Heifetz himself. The book is not at all a substitute for taking the class with him but I did find that it enhanced my understanding of the framework he taught us

The author highlights Margaret Sanger, a vile racist who expoused eugenics that led to the holocaust and created an organization that has murdered millions of black babies, but the rest of the book was good, so 2/5 stars

I don't tend to enjoy these kinds of books, but the observations in this volume are very interesting. Furthermore, it is well written, which makes for more enjoyable reading. There are great historical examples of leadership (both good and bad), and the prescriptions for leadership are broad enough to be used in almost any setting. If you want to read a secular book and leadership, this one would be worth your time.

Book: Adaptive Leadership

Left: Math, Planning (deliberate), Waterfall (sequential), Porter
Right: Art, Unplanned (emerging), Agile (adaptive), Mintzberg

Leadership: Adaption and Authority

This book is very good, five star already. As I read the table of content it say about important concept, first: death, as he mention that leadership is dangerous as the stress of adaptive work can be severe to the death literally. second: authority. Although the book also examine the balance between adaptive vs routine work. But introduction of these death and authority concept is the very important message of this book.

page 2: Crisis in leadership in many areas of public and private life such as uncompetitive industry, drug abuse, poverty, poor public education, environmental hazard, ethnic strife, budget deficits, economic dislocation, obstacles to constructive foreign relations.

page 3: The first is a belief that many problems are embedded in complicated and interactive systems.

Most professionals have a systems bias. Car mechanics, business executives, and urban planners think systemically about problems, focusing on the interacting parts of a car, business, or city. The second bias from biology is to assume that much of behavior reflects an adaptation to circumstances. As a third bias, I think of authority relationships in terms of service.

page 5 As a psychiatrist, I believe that many adaptive and communicative processes are unconscious, and I learn about them by inference.

page 8 My view of leadership is organized around two key distinctions: between technical and adaptive problems, and between leadership and authority. The first points to the different modes of action required to deal with routine problems in contrast with those that demand innovation and learning; the second provides a framework for assessing resources and developing a leadership strategy depending upon whether one has or does not have authority

Notes:
Dominance, Authority, Culture
Attention is the currency of leadership
We have problem with authority, we have problem with attention
Politics of inclusion, interesting